Blood and desire

Chapter One: The Return

(Isoldea's POV)

The city gates loomed before me, black iron against the storm-lit sky, their towering presence a silent omen. Beyond them lay the capitalâ€"a place I had not seen in fifteen years, a place that had long since become myth and shadow in my mind. The wind whispered through the narrow streets, carrying the scent of rain-soaked stone, damp horses, and the acrid tang of burning tallow from the market stalls. Beneath it all was something deeper, something older the ghost of blood spilled upon these streets, the quiet hum of power that pulsed beneath the surface like a heartbeat beneath silk.

I had been a child when I last passed through these gates, my small fingers gripping the heavy fabric of my mother’s gown, my heart a frightened creature in my chest. I remembered little from that night beyond the sensation of being torn away, of cold arms lifting me from warmth, of a voice perhaps my mother's, perhaps the gods calling my name into the void. I had been sent away, hidden in the halls of another noble house under the guise of a ward, though even then I had sensed the lie beneath the words. My exile had been no act of kindness. It had been a severing, a burial. A sacrifice made in silence.

But I had not remained a child. The years had carved their lessons into me with patient cruelty, stripping away the softness of innocence, leaving behind something sharper, something more resilient. I had learned the art of survival in the courts of strangers, had watched queens smile with lips painted in honeyed poison, had learned that a well-placed silence could be as deadly as a blade. I had become something other than what they had intended. And now, after years spent locked away in distant halls, I had been summoned back to the kingdom that had cast me out.

Not for love. Not for reconciliation.

For duty.

For marriage.